


Control Your Insolence

by sharkcar



Series: Clone Wars Tarot Cards [17]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Drinking, Loyalty, Slavery, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 06:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12315162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: A new tarot series, with stories and illustrations of the Major Arcana.Commander Wolffe goes out for a drink with Captain Rex and his Jedi general and they have a discussion about slavery and the future.





	Control Your Insolence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DubDibDib](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=DubDibDib).



> I’m continuing with my Clone Wars series based on Tarot cards, which I use at times for creative inspiration. I’ve always liked them and the symbolic imagery is rich. Their appearance and lore are obviously appealing to a fan of fantasy. When I did the illustrations for the Tarot face cards, I was basing the card identities on the canon biographies of each Clone Wars character I featured. Therefore, I didn’t think they required stories for explanation, since these stories already exist. So I posted them with just a few notes on the symbolism.  
> I started jotting down ideas for little vignettes to see if I could use the Major Arcana Tarot cards as themes. All cards are loosely based on the Rider Waite tarot designs.  
> Like with the Minor Arcana face cards, I did not do these in any particular order. This one just caught my eye, because of the dark and light figures and the Chosen-One-like driver. I chose Wolffe as narrator for this first story because I never use Anakin as a narrator, and because Rex has a tendency to sugar coat. For example, he would never have called himself a slave, and he never found Anakin dubious.

[LINK HERE: The Chariot](https://sharkcar.tumblr.com/post/166217490445/the-chariot-this-is-the-illustration-to)

This one night, late in the war, Skywalker took me and Rex out. Skywalker was like me, he was restless and always wanted company. In my case, I have always had this irrational fear that if I’m left alone, I’ll die and end up imprisoned in some eternal void. I have to see people to make sure I’m still here. Skywalker said company helped drown out the voices in his head. The Grand Army of the Republic was a real institution by then. Of the mental variety.

Clones weren’t allowed in most places on Coruscant, but General Skywalker was famous, so people let him do anything. I was impressed that one of the things he chose to do with that kind of power was be seen with clones out in public. Clones weren’t popular with the Republic’s citizenry and legally we were considered livestock. So usually people either hated us or looked down on us, or were even grossed out by our presence. Skywalker didn’t have to use his popularity like that. I know it took some courage. People did pay attention to what he did and because they liked him, they saw the things he did in a positive light. I know he really liked hanging out with us brothers. I think it was because we weren’t trying to get anything from him. He dealt with people his whole life, who were trying to use him to benefit themselves or to influence things one way or another. Our lack of pretension was refreshing for him.

The only thing is, outside of our own family, we brothers had a hard time knowing what we could say around a natural born person. Any citizen of the Republic could have killed us for any reason at any time and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. Essentially, we were powerless. The worst the Republic might do was bill the offender for the cost of the property. One of the realities of our situation. Rex and I were still in bondage. And Skywalker, a former slave himself, reluctantly held the end of our chains. I think he, unlike most people, knew the danger of the power he had.

One night, we were practically shoulder to shoulder at this crowded club where you had to stand. It was at one of these divey places Skywalker liked, where they decorate with junk. The drinks were cheap and this band was playing really loud. That suited us, clones didn’t want to have conversations in places where we could be overheard.  
Skywalker was telling Rex about his junkyard days. “Nah. I was stealing that place blind and selling on what I could. Watto didn’t even notice. Mom and I would have starved to death if I hadn’t, he was so cheap. Besides, I was the one who fixed the stuff up, got it working again. Watto didn’t know the value of anything there, he was too stupid. He pretty much deserved it.”

“Uh…yeah.” Rex extended that ‘yeah’ was extended just a fraction of a second too long. Brothers knew that meant expressing dubiousness. Non-clones couldn’t tell. Rex had this whole personal code of honor that he defended. Unlike almost all brothers, Rex had never stolen anything. He obeyed all the rules. I’d seen him lecture brothers who’d been caught honor fighting, or any of the numerous other things most brothers did on a daily basis. I’d seen brothers near tears for disappointing him. He never imposed his will on any other brothers, but brothers did try to imitate him. Usually they failed miserably. Not Rex, though. Anyway, I guess Rex disagreed with the idea of stupid people deserving to be abused.

I believed otherwise. I couldn’t stand a person with power being able to be cruel to someone beneath them, without consequences. Out-smarting people like that was sometimes all you had to fight back. I lowered my drink and swallowed loudly, “Yeah he did. It probably didn’t feel too bad getting one over on the old Master either.”

Rex shot me a look telling me to be polite. I imagined the caption to be, ‘Control your insolence, we’re in mixed company.’

Skywalker picked up his drink off the table, “That’s why I always tell Obi-Wan, slaves can’t be trusted. He doesn’t believe me, says it’s an unfair generalization, and a pessimistic view of people. But I say, the system of slavery makes disloyalty a necessary condition for survival. Betrayal is not a matter of if but when.”

I smiled a toothy but anxious grin, and giggled awkwardly, “Whaaaaat?” I was still a slave. I’d never heard General Skywalker specifically identify us clones as slaves, so I was unsure whether he included us in that statement, or if he intended it more generally. But it made me afraid. If he thought we were disloyal, it might have meant he didn’t trust us? I didn’t know if his never using the term ‘slave’ when talking about us was by a personal distinction he made or if the Jedi had told him to be cautious in what he said. But I was afraid if he didn’t trust us, he could have cut off our arms. His matter of fact tone made me skittish.

Rex could see that. “But that’s why you believe the institution of slavery should be eradicated completely, isn’t it sir?”

Skywalker put the drink back down, never drinking any. He often pretended to drink when he was out with people. He said he didn’t like to be disoriented. “Exactly. Some institutions are just wrong because they take away people’s ability to make choice to be good. How can you tell someone it’s wrong to steal, when their only choice is steal or die? Don’t I have a right to live? Should I have let my mom go hungry to be loyal to a money-grubbing junk dealer who mistreated us?”

“Of course not.” I paused. I hoped he didn’t think I advocating for being disloyal. I didn’t know if Master Anakin would feel differently if the enslaved person wasn’t him or someone he loved. I really wanted to think he was just sincerely a good guy. But I just had a hard time trusting him. He wasn’t my family, not really. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking just from his face. But he could tell what I was thinking because he was born with the ability. It was the fact that he was so powerful that I found intimidating. I did not want him to feel threatened.

“No one should ever be that desperate. People cannot be allowed to do that to each other. They have to be made to do better than that.” Skywalker was using words like ‘allowed’ and ‘made to’. It was strange to hear him talking about rules, since he didn’t seem to follow any of the ones governing the army or his order.

Rex caught me giving him a look that meant ‘get a load of this guy’. He tried to clarify, “It’s ideals that make this war worthwhile, there are things we can all agree on that would help everyone.” Ideals sounded better than imposing one’s will. “One of those things is having the ability to choose what kind of life we want. The Seppies don’t respect that, they want everyone to live under a state where the dictator decides what you’re allowed to do, or see, or know about. They don’t even allow you to make fun of their leader, as if he was more than human.” Rex had always walked around with the posture of a guy who believes he is amazing. I think it’s called self-respect, but I wouldn’t know self-respect if it kicked me in the dick. Rex didn’t believe there was anyone that deserved to be treated any better than him. Not even a guy who ran half the galaxy, owned a seemingly endless droid army, and was also a Sith lord who possessed limitless magical powers. The thing about Rex was, he treated everyone else exactly as he treated himself, with the utmost respect. He just demanded the same in return.

I, on the other hand, treated everyone like I treated myself, by making fun until you’re either laughing or crying. “You can keep your ideals. I’m just trying to not get killed. I’m only here for my brothers. If there were no clones in the army, if they retired us like out-dated equipment or something, I’d probably stop working and just leave someone else to get on with things.” This was something bold to say in front of a general. But I liked being provocative.

Skywalker didn’t seem offended, “You might not have to. The Republic could use experienced trainers. At least then you’d keep your medical care, that’s something worth having, even if the work was monotonous compared to combat.”

I hadn’t thought the Republic would ever offer me anything. I did like it that in the Republic, lifestyle choice was not a punishable offense. It had been on Kamino, I was severely punished in my childhood for many of the things I did. Things like asking too many questions, and not respecting their answers. Apparently in the Confederacy of Independent Systems, they rounded up undesirables and made them work themselves to death in prisons. Rex had been in one for a time.

“Monotonous work would be nice. Kind of the ideal medical care, that. I never loved getting shot at.” I had a dream of becoming a major drug dealer and living with my girlfriend permanently.

Skywalker shoulder checked Rex, “Rex would want to be out there fighting still, wouldn’t you, Rex? Lots of people need our help protecting those rights.”

“Uh…sure.” Rex had hesitated just a bit. I didn’t think Rex wanted the life he’d always had. He didn’t necessarily like getting shot at either. Self-respect requires self-preservation so there is a self around to be respected.

I took another sip. “What about that idea of opening your own distillery?”

Rex looked at me warily. I supposed Rex talked to family differently than he talked to Skywalker, which surprised me. They’d always been close. “Uh…yeah, but I could probably do both.”

I sensed Rex was uncomfortable with Skywalker knowing about his dreams. I wondered whether Rex was just being too polite to presume that the Republic would let him choose how to live. Or if he just didn’t want to hurt Skywalker’s feelings by imagining a life on his own outside of the army. I got the impression that there was a little bit of fear that made Rex do that. The term ‘loyalty’ can be a subjective one. How far does one have to go to be ‘loyal’ before it becomes obedience? Rex wasn’t sure where Skywalker thought that line was.

Skywalker noticed his Captain’s reticence. Fricking Jedi could sense your feelings as well. Talk about an unequal relationship. “Of course you can! Do you know what they pay civilian consultants to the army? Or those bounty hunters who they have training on Kamino? If you were paid even close to that, you could have a distillery and a bunch of people working for you.”

“You mean YOU think they’ll manumit us?” I didn’t say ‘free us’ because I didn’t want to offend, if he didn’t think we were slaves. I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful. “You think they’ll even let us own property?” He was making the Republic look better all the time.

Skywalker put down his drink again, “Of course they will. You know after this war, nothing is going to be the same. The old institutions of the Republic are increasingly irrelevant. The Separatists offer only tyranny, which no one wants. Once Dooku’s gone, we have a chance to build something completely new where everyone has a place.”

Rex nodded, “What we got right now, they have a lot of good ideas. People like Senator Amidala get it. We just have to remember to always look out for each other.”

Skywalker shrugged. “I don’t know how much longer she’ll want to stay in the Senate anyway after the war is over. She only served in the first place after the queen appointed her. She wants to retire and have a private life, make a charitable foundation to actually help people. She says she feels like sometimes the government does nothing but enrich itself. What we need is to do a better job of looking out for each other. I think they’ll be a whole new system of government where we streamline things. And anyone who doesn’t want to go along with that has got to be made to respect our rights.” He swirled his drink and looked at it. “We’ll make sure that anyone who seeks to hurt us won’t be able to.”

I looked at Rex, he heard it too. Just something about the first person plural pronoun in that last sentence felt a little more…personal.

He put the drink down again. “Look, nothing against people like Padme, but she was brought up in the old system to believe that there shouldn’t be hardship, but she never had to experience any firsthand. It means she can be a little bleeding heart. Always giving people the benefit of the doubt. She doesn’t see what people are up to. How many times have people tried to kill her? It’s a little childish if you ask me.”

Rex looked slightly surprised, “Sir, I’m sure…”

I considered myself something of an expert, having maintained a successful relationship for over two years, “Never assume a woman is childish. None of them are, not really. It’s an act. That’s what my girlfriend says.”

Rex seemed surprised at me, “Not all women are acting. Like with any kind of people, some are just nice. They care. Even about people that might not be perfect. You have to forgive people sometimes.”

Skywalker shook his head, “But she hasn’t been where we have, she hasn’t seen the things we’ve seen.” I thought with that pronoun there, he meant ‘we’ as in the army. But he also could have meant the things people did to slaves. I wanted to believe he was trying to convey that, however guardedly. “She hasn’t seen firsthand how awful people can be, especially when they’ve been taught the wrong things. Zygerrians, for example, believe in a slave system because it’s made them rich. Now, they actively encourage their children to be sadistic because they’ll grow up to be better slave owners. These monsters teach their kids that there are people who have a right over someone else’s life. We can’t make deals with people like that. We have to make them change what they’re doing. Padme has never seen this. She’s far too trusting. She can’t even see how unfair things already are right here in the Republic.”

“I know!” I was suddenly very angry. “When do most people get a break? I got a friend who fled from the war on Ryloth, then she got here as an illegal and had to support herself through prostitution. Then she almost overdosed but because she went to a hospital and they ran her papers, she’s in a detention facility and being deported. People shouldn’t have to choose between their life and their safety.” I was annoyed about this situation because I was the one who brought her to the hospital. I should have just brought her to the base or paid for something illegal.

Skywalker shook his head, “See, now laws like that just don’t make sense. They’re not even humane.”

I realized that General Skywalker was smarter than I’d given him credit for. I wondered why the Republic wasn’t led by people like him. “So…you discuss which laws we should have?”

“All the time with the Chancellor. He thinks my experiences will be a real help when we shape policy after the war.” It finally seemed clear who he meant by ‘we’.

Rex looked directly at Skywalker. We clones rarely made eye contact with natural born people, for fear of giving them a sense we were too aggressive. But Rex shared a bond with Skywalker, so he’d know there was no threat. “So he’s…not….planning on stepping down after the war? I thought he was already past his term.”

Skywalker put the cup down again and looked back, “Why should he? He’s gotten us this far. It’ll probably cut down on the amount of corruption. People trust him as a leader. I think he’s proven that he wants what’s best.”

By this time, I was feeling like Skywalker had good answers for everything. If he said the Chancellor would take care of it, I was happy to let him, as long as I could have some kind of life. I was feeling hopeful, so I asked him about something else that was making me feel bad, “Hey, I got a question, I got this other…friend.” Rex looked at me with a face that meant ‘what are you doing?’ I couraged on, “So this brother, right, he wanted to try it with a girl. So he goes to this brothel, not knowing the girls were slaves, or even what a slave was. So he does it and then finds out she was a slave, so technically what he did was rape. He didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but he just can’t get the thought out of his head that he’s got this stain on him.”

Skywalker didn’t even seem creeped out. I guess it didn’t surprise him. He was from Tatooine, after all. “That’s exactly my point. If there were no slavery, it wouldn’t have happened. We’re going to make sure things like that stop.”

I felt better than I had in a while. Like something might actually get done. “Wow. You really make a guy feel positively about the future. You should do public speaking tours or get a weekly holonet program or something.”

“I wouldn’t do anything as stupid as that.” Skywalker had obviously been told that before. The Grand Army of the Republic asked him to do all kinds of PR things to garner support for the war effort. They had posters of him that he had always found it embarrassing.

“I know you Jedi don’t keep possessions for yourselves, but I bet people would send money for any cause you asked them to,” I pointed out.

“As soon as someone asks you for money to do something, their trustworthiness is in question,” Skywalker said with conviction. “I don’t want people saying that I’m only doing things for money.”

“How much do you have in your expense account from the Temple again?” I just blurted it out before I could stop myself. I felt like he was being judgmental and I couldn’t help it. My girlfriend and I did a lot of illegal things to make money, but it didn’t mean you couldn’t trust us. Business was something separate from how we defined ourselves. Saying we didn’t need money to interact with people was one thing, but the way he chose to express it gave me pause. Trustworthiness. How do you measure that? Who gets to do the measuring? I was a criminal, which would imply I was untrustworthy. But for people like us clones, we had always had to live by our wits. To me it was no different than Skywalker stealing to feed his mother. After we brothers left Kamino and came to the Republic, having more money than they gave us was forbidden. It made us vulnerable, as I think it was intended to. I felt making money, even if it was by shady means, evened the odds when people were oppressed. Bribes and back channels were our only way to fight back when the system didn’t serve us.

Rex apparently felt he needed to apologize for me, “Well, sir, not all of us have the opportunities some people have. What Wolffe means is, everyone needs a job. Survival depends on it. But it’s also part of how we define ourselves.”

“I’m not saying I don’t want anyone to make a living. I don’t want people to give money to something so someone else will make the universe better. That just makes people who can’t think for themselves and who just do what you tell them. I want people to change the way they act, because they should. And if someone is taking money to offer you answers, you have to wonder how much they are lying to you. Some people really are hypocritical.” Skywalker obviously had specific people in mind. He looked at Rex, “It’s better to have a mission.”

“Not everyone who makes a living off of something is insincere. Like if we’re doing some good or we’re doing something we love that we want to share, or even just providing for people we care for.” Rex was using ‘we’ now.

I was tired of Rex trying to mansplain for me. “No, what I meant was, not everyone has the luxury to choose what they want to do. I got this other buddy of mine, grew up on some backwater nowhere rock like we did,” now I was doing it. “So there weren’t exactly a lot of options for education or training. So he came here for opportunity, but he can’t get a job anywhere because of his species. Here he is, trying to make a life and he wants to be a straight up guy. He doesn’t want to do it with a girl unless he’s going to marry her. It’s a culture thing. But with no money, no wife. What’s worth working towards then? Where’s his mission? His purpose?”

Skywalker seemed to agree, “This is what I mean, if things are too unfair people can’t even be happy. It’s not even a good state for a society to be in. Apathetic people aren’t even productive, they won’t be conscientious in their work.”

I shot Rex a look that meant, ‘Did he mean me?’ Rex was used to my anxiety. He gave a nearly imperceptible head shake. I still thought Skywalker meant me. I was dressed pretty apathetically. I hadn’t even shaved.

Rex tried to help, “What he means is, if people have nothing to hope for, they will lose focus on their purpose. Or give up.”

I smirked, “What if their purpose just didn’t involve work?”

“I’m sure we could find ways to motivate them,” Skywalker elbowed me somewhat jovially, but it actually hurt. He had pointy elbows. I didn’t dare even say, ‘ow’. The guy was carrying a light saber.


End file.
